We learned this from an old ferryman who was able to take his small boat over to deliver supplies from nearby farms.
As ferryman of the dead he is not mentioned in Homer or Hesiod, and in this character is probably of Egyptian origin.
He discovered some 20 bodies - complete with coins in their mouths to pay the ferryman for the journey to the other world.
Christopher Golden is an American award-winning, bestselling author of such novels as Wildwood Road, The Boys Are Back in Town, The Ferryman, Strangewood, Of Saints and Shadows, and the Body of Evidence series of teen thrillers.
The simple offering of food or shedding of blood at the grave develops into an elaborate system of sacrifice; even where ancestor-worship is not found, the desire to provide the dead with comforts in the future life may lead to the sacrifice of wives, slaves, animals, &c., to the breaking or burning of objects at the grave or to the provision of the ferryman's toll, a coin put in the mouth of the corpse to pay the travelling expenses of the soul.
